THE BODIES AT THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING AREN'T COLD YET, BUT GUN FETISHISTS ARE ALREADY ACTING SMUG

You probably know the story, which is horrible:

A recently fired store worker shot a former colleague to death and then randomly started shooting others near the Empire State Building before he was shot by police officers, law enforcement officials said.

Eight other people were struck by bullets when the shooting started at about 9 a.m. on the Fifth Avenue side of the building but those injuries are not believed to be life threatening, police said....

The first reaction of a couple of Gateway Pundit's commenters is snark:

He’s in trouble now..NY is a gun free zone..right Bloomberg?

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This has to be a mistake. Guns are not allowed in NYC. Obviously the criminal element doesn't know this or else they would leave their guns at home.

Meanwhile, the Freepers are linking this:

Empire State Building Shooting Is Proof that Gun Control Doesn't Work

The shootings around the Empire State Building today are further proof that gun control simply doesn't work -- except to keep guns out of the hands of those who might want to legally defend themselves.


New York City is a de facto "Gun Free Zone." Thus, by liberal logic, there should be zero gun crime. How, then, is it possible that firearms account for about 60% of all murders in New York? By liberal logic, murderers in New York aren't able to own guns. See how absurd the logic of the gun grabbers is? ...

Yeah, because that huge Berlin Wall around the five boroughs should have kept illegal guns out, but somehow it didn't. Silly liberals!

Five bucks says this weapon came from a No-Tell Motel of a gun shop somewhere in Virginia, where the gun laws are Southern but the travel time to the big cities of the Northeast, and the unsavory folks therein, is conveniently brief.

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Gun fetishists are smug after every shooting, regardless of where it takes place, because the gun lobby continually primes them to be dissatisfied with the status quo. There's always another gun law standing between the rubes and real freedom, so wherever there's a mass shooting, those horrible laws are at fault. In New York City, it's all that gun-banning. If there's a mass shooting at a school in Mississippi or Arkansas or Kentucky, then laws against packing concealed heat in schools is at fault.

(I'm not sure how these folks explain away the Fort Hood shooting. I'm pretty sure the soldiers at Fort Hood are allowed to carry weapons.)

If a future Republican president gives us a Supreme Court that overturns all state or local gun law stricter than those in, say, Rick Perry's Texas, the gunners will still blame gun crime on the few laws that remain. Maybe we'll have a rhetorical arms race, until we're seriously debating legalized private ownership of tactical nuclear weapons (because the Framers really wanted it that way, and the ban is the reason for all that crime). Or maybe we'll shift gears and the gunners will start arguing that you simply don't have the legal right to prevent them from carrying concealed weapons on your private property (in the same way that many right-wingers argue that criticizing a right-winger's speech is a violation of that right-winger's First Amendment rights). Whatever happens, we can loosen the gun laws all we want, and it'll never be enough for the gun crowd.